Category: School Reform & Leadership

Recently in Fordham’s Flypaper, Robert Pondiscio reflected a new direction for education reform: a focus on instructional practice. He writes: Shifting ed reform’s focus to improving practice is an acknowledgment that underperformance is not a failure of will, but a lack of capacity. It’s a talent-development and human capital-strategy, not an accountability play. Forcing changes Read more about Thinking About Classroom Practice: Five Ideas for Education Reformers[…]

Over the last 20 years, eight U.S. cities have seen more students attending more effective schools at a faster pace than other urban areas. In Oakland, D.C., Denver, New Orleans, New York City, Newark, Camden, and Chicago, education leaders have increased the number of high-performing schools and set up systems that continuously improve. Bellwether Education’s Read more about How Do You Build Continuously Improving Systems of Schools?[…]

The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) launched The CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL that provides an interactive planner, step-by-step guidance, field-tested tools, and continuous improvement processes to help educators implement social and emotional learning (SEL) in their schools. The free, online resource helps school teams coordinate and build on their evidence-based practices Read more about CASEL Releases Comprehensive Guide to Help Schools Implement SEL[…]

Writing for CRPE’s Thinking Forward collection of essays, authors Michael DeArmond, Christine Campbell and Paul Hill have published a piece that explores new teacher roles that enable teachers to focus on soft skills and personalization. Excerpts of the piece appear below: Above all, emerging ideas from the field about how to make teaching more doable Read more about The Uncertain Future of Teaching[…]

The Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development has released a major national report, “From a Nation at Risk to a Nation at Hope,” calling on all sectors of society to accelerate efforts to ensure that all U.S. students have access to quality social and emotional learning (SEL). The report is an Read more about A Nation at…. Hope[…]

As part of CRPE’s 25th anniversary collection, Thinking Forward: New Ideas for a New Era of Public Education, Robin Lake and Travis Pillow explore how a system built to meet the needs of “square peg” students could benefit all students. They write: A growing effort to personalize learning moves in the right direction, but is Read more about Designing an Education System for the Tails, Not the Mean[…]

Writing for the Fordham Institute’s Flypaper blog, Michael Petrilli recently explored ways to encourage educators to implement evidence-based practices. He asks: How might we dramatically increase the chances that our schools scale up the most effective practices, resulting in significantly better outcomes for students? Petrilli offers the following ideas: There are six plausible approaches that Read more about How to get Schools to Use Practices that Work[…]

Liz Bell, writing for EdNC recently explored the evidence basis for early college high schools. Excerpts of the piece appear below: The SERVE Center and researchers from RTI International and RAND Corporation have found early college students are more likely to attend class, complete courses that prepare them to enter into a university, and graduate Read more about The Impact of Early Colleges: What does the research say?[…]

In 2015, an organization called GripTape began a new experiment to see what would happen if young people were put in the driver’s seat of their own learning. GripTape’s most recent learning report details the results of this bold experiment, among which are the following outcomes: Youth experience a powerful and sustained transformation in their Read more about In the Driver’s Seat: GripTape Learning Report[…]

In the Center for Public Education’s blog, The Lens, Robin Lake lays out 10 bold new ideas to push the education field toward the future. How can a shift in mindset from a portfolio of schools to a portfolio of learning opportunities help realize every student’s potential and prepare them to solve tomorrow’s most important Read more about The Year of Thinking Forward[…]

Writing for Ed Excellence, Michael Petrilli has summarized some of the biggest problems with educational research and has proposed three promising pathways forward. Excerpts from his piece appear below: Whereas the world outside of our schools has been transformed by information technology, the data we collect on classroom practices is somewhere between nonexistent and laughably Read more about Researchers Peek into the Black Box of the Classroom[…]

Fragmentation in education limits our ability to provide students with what they need to succeed. Students lose out when the adults in their lives get pulled in different directions. They lose out when their teachers teach one way to deliver a curriculum, and another to prepare them for standardized tests. They lose out when what Read more about From Fragmentation to Coherence[…]

Recently in Getting Smart, David Ross wrote an article summarizing key practices for school innovation, with links to some of the most innovative schools in the world. Excerpts from the piece appear below: Recent visits to renowned centers of innovation such as AltSchool in San Francisco and the Dalton Academy in Beijing have got me Read more about Four Keys to Success at the Most Innovative Schools in the World[…]

Improvement-minded educators and policymakers have found that changes to one element of the education system often have unintended consequences in other areas. As a result, it is important to consider the holistic system when implementing reforms. In Core Education’s November issue brief, we explore systems change in education. We explore resources that center on comprehensive Read more about November Issue Brief: Systemic Education Reform[…]